“No.” I balance shaker lids in a pile while I’m waiting for her to finish the next pepper. She’s pouting like a little kid. “You’re busy,” I say, “I didn’t want to bother you.” Partly I feel bad I didn’t invite her and partly I’m just embarrassed for her. The pouting isn’t as cute as she thinks it is. She would have stuck out like a sore thumb in that crowd. They were all odd ducks, but Margo, she’s a different kind.

“Well, that’s not a bother; that’s exciting.” Pepper spills. She uses her hand to corral it to the end of the counter and sweeps it into the shaker. Only a little ends up on the floor. “Hey, wait. How’d you get all the way out to the Blue Moon?”

I smile. “You don’t want to know.”

“What are you doing to me?” She swats my shoulder with the towel she keeps tucked in her apron and gets up to go behind the counter. “You know I don’t have money for bail just lying around.”

“I’ll save for my own bail. I have to go to summer school anyway, may as well be for good reason. Can I pull extra shifts? Keep me out of trouble,” I say, batting my eyelashes at her. I don’t tell her Matty and I talked about saving for a wedding. She’ll get too excited about dresses and flowers or launch into another lecture about Matty and how sixteen isn’t old enough to be making the kinds of decisions that aren’t easily undone, and either way, she’ll forget I ever asked about the extra shifts.

“Hon, things are tight.” She looks me over and sighs. “Let me see what I can do. I’ll crunch numbers and check the schedule.”

“You don’t have to pay me overtime or even full on the extra shifts. It’ll be like undertime. Or I’ll just go for tips like I used to.”

She shakes her head. “I double you up on Lorraine, she’ll get pissy with me. There’s not enough tables to have two girls on at the same time.” She looks me right in the eyes. Margo can read my face better than anyone. “Let me think on it,” she says.

Margo dated my dad in high school and then they tried to date again after my mom left us. That was back when we lived over the Wash ’n Fold on Ames Street, before we got the motorhome. The whole apartment smelled like soapsuds.

When they went on dates, Margo would pick up my dad so she could see me too. She’d braid my hair or help me dress my dolls while he rounded up his wallet, shoes, and keys and checked the score on his radio one last time.